A Show For The Don…

Ivan.

The basement beneath the Petrov estate was always colder than the rest of the estate.

Concrete walls, dim industrial lights, blood-spattered floor with the faint metallic scent that never quite washed away.

I sat motionless in my wheelchair at the center of one of the cells, my black suit crisp and immaculate, the black blanket draped neatly over my useless-looking legs.

Marco stood behind the maid, silent as death in his own black attire, gloves already dark with her blood.

Her name was Katya. Really young and once pretty. Now, her face was swollen, one eye shut, lips split and bleeding, hair matted to her skull with blood, sweat and tears. She hung from the chains Marco had secured to the ceiling pipe, her toes barely scraping the floor.

I didn’t raise my voice. I never needed to.

“Who sent you?” I asked low, almost conversational.

Katya whimpered, blood and saliva dripping from her chin. “P-please… I don’t know what you’re—”

Marco drove the knife deeper into her thigh and twisted it viciously. The scream that tore out of her was raw, animal. It bounced off the walls and died slowly.

I waited until the echo faded. “I know you’ve been adding something to my meals for weeks,” I continued, as if we were discussing the weather. “Something that makes my legs numb and has made me crippled. Who. Sent. You?”

My fingers rested lightly on the armrest, the small recorder in my pocket already running.

I already knew the answer—Anastasia’s name had been written in every symptom, every numb morning, every carefully prepared meal.

But I needed the maid to say it.

I wanted evidence. Insurance that couldn’t be denied later.

Tears streamed down her face.

Her good eye darted wildly between me and Marco.

Blood and spit dripped from her chin onto the floor in steady plops.

I lifted one finger a fraction. “Start chopping off her fingers, Marco.”

“No! Wait! I’ll talk,” she gasped. “Please… I’ll talk, I swear, just—”

The heavy metal door creaked open.

Anastasia swept in like she owned the air itself—silk robe fluttering around her ankles, platinum hair perfectly styled and gleaming even in the ugly light, perfume cutting through the stench of fear and blood.

My father’s mistress.

The woman who had poisoned my life long before she started poisoning my food.

“What the hell is going on down here?” she demanded, voice pitched high with practiced shock. “I could hear screaming from the east wing. It sounded… inhuman.”

Her gaze flicked to Katya, then to me, widening in feigned maternal concern.

She had timed it perfectly—right when the girl was about to break. Of course, she had.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

“You chose an interesting moment to come check on the staff, Anastasia.”

She pressed a manicured hand to her chest. “The screams touched me. What could a maid possibly have done to upset you this much? It’s been years since anyone was foolish enough to cross you, Ivan. I thought perhaps there was an intruder.”

I studied her the way a wolf studies a rabbit that thinks it’s clever.

Marco, who paused, his knife still embedded in the maid’s flesh, glanced at me.

I lifted one hand slightly and he stepped back.

“I’m trying to discover who has been poisoning my food,” I said flatly. “To make my legs go numb.”

Anastasia’s perfectly arched brows rose in fake horror. “Poison? In your food?” She gave a soft, pitying laugh that echoed too sweetly in the cold room. “Darling, I thought it was simply the old gunshot wound acting up again. You know—the one from that ambush in Saint Petersburg? These things linger. Perhaps you should see another specialist instead of… this.” She gestured vaguely at the bleeding, sobbing woman as if Katya were an unpleasant stain on the carpet.

I said nothing.

The silence stretched, heavy and uncomfortable.

She took a step closer, voice softening into that honeyed maternal tone she used when she wanted something. “The best thing is to fire her. Or simply have her removed quietly. No need for all this mess.” A delicate pause, as if the idea had just occurred to her. “Actually, I have a better solution. I spoke with one of your father’s old friends. He has a daughter of marriageable age. Nice girl. From a good family. We’ve arranged everything. She can take over the household duties—your meals, your care. No more strangers with access to your food. No more risks.”

I leaned back slightly in the chair, the blanket shifting over my legs. “No.”

Anastasia blinked, the picture of surprise. “Ivan—”

“I don’t want a wife.”

“You have a daughter,” she pressed, smooth as silk. “Little Sofia needs a mother’s touch. She’s growing up without any feminine guidance. A wife would bring stability. She could manage the staff, the kitchens, and the entire estate. You would be protected.”

My jaw tightened—the only outward sign of the anger rising beneath my skin. “I said I don’t need a wife. No one will ever replace my late wife. And I will not have some girl playing mother to my child. Sofia already has a mother.”

Anastasia’s expression melted into something that might have looked like sympathy on anyone else. “A mother who is dead, Ivan. I only suggest this from a place of care. If you’re already suspecting the maids of tampering with your food, imagine how much safer it would be with a wife by your side. Someone loyal. Someone bound to you.”

I met her eyes. “I have said my piece. It is final.”

She sighed, as if dealing with a stubborn child, robe fluttering as she shifted. “She doesn’t even have to be a real wife, if that’s what bothers you. She can perform the duties of a maid. Cook. Clean. Attend to you.”Her lips curved into a sly, knowing smile. “Suck your cock from time to time, if you wish. Keep things simple.”

The silence that followed was colder than the basement air.

“I would rather not marry her at all if she is to be nothing more than a maid,” I said, each word carved from stone.

Anastasia waved a dismissive hand. “Fine. But I’ve already arranged for the girl to be brought here this evening. You can’t expect me to send them away now. Your father’s old friend would be insulted. You know how these alliances work.”

“I don’t care.”

“Why must you make everything so difficult?”

“And why are you making me associate with people beneath me, Anastasia? Do you think I’m a fool? Do you see me as a lesser man because I can’t walk?”

She stepped even closer, voice dropping into that sweet, wounded tone she used so well. “I’m only looking out for you, Ivan. I would never think such a thing. You’re like a son to me.”

Inside my chest, the thought burned clear and lethal—Liar. Snake.

The only reason she still walked these halls, still breathed the same air as me and my daughter, was because she had given birth to my half-brother and used the boy as leverage.

She had been poisoning me drop by drop, week by week, waiting for the day my legs truly failed so her useless son could inherit the legitimate Petrov empire while I sat here rotting.

I knew she thought the wheelchair made me weak.

That I was already beaten, now I was crippled and now she’d decided to hand me off to some common, classless girl for marriage.

I was the Don of the Bratva Sever mafia.

I didn’t get here by chance or favours.

I claimed my throne over all the dealings in the underground world of Moscow.

Anastasia had no idea I had stopped eating her tainted food weeks ago.

No idea about the antidote, I took every dawn in the locked privacy of my bathroom.

No idea I could stand, walk, run, kill—whenever I chose.

I let them see the cripple.

Let them grow bold enough to underestimate me.

Let them think they were winning.

I would destroy her the same way I destroyed every enemy who thought they could beat me.

Quietly. Patiently. Completely.

I turned my head a fraction toward Marco. “Take the maid away. She’s no longer useful.”

Katya began sobbing again as Marco cut her down.

Anastasia smiled, satisfied, as if the entire ugly scene had been neatly tidied. “Good. Now come upstairs and prepare yourself. The girl will be here soon. Her name is Vanya. You’ll like her. She’s… very quiet.”

I said nothing. A wife. How laughable.

They wanted to push a poor, common girl into my house to finish what the poison had started.

Very well.

I would let them bring her.

And then I would decide exactly how to bend the little puppet and break her to pieces.

The choice, like everything else in this house, would be mine alone.